[Review] I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying: A Surprisingly Mature Romance Comedy

Hello, Lumi here again, and being an adult is kinda scary, isn’t it?

[Repost today because I’ve been busy with the backlog, and I wanted to introduce this anime to my new followers]

Recently, I’ve been thinking a bit about my future, what my career is going to be like, how will I maintain my relationships with friends and family, am I going to be able to get out of the stagnant rut I am in, the kind of stuff that makes me want hug my legs in a corner and die, you know, the usual.

With those thoughts said, this anime couldn’t have arrived at a better time. What I thought was gonna be a dirty and reference-filled anime turned out to be one of the most mature anime I’ve watched in a while that tackles the very things I struggle with in the previous paragraph.

MAL Link

Summary from MAL:

Though they couldn’t be any more different, love has managed to blossom between Hajime Tsunashi, a hardcore otaku who shuts himself in at home while making a living ofconsideringf his blog, and his wife Kaoru—a hard-working office lady who, in contrast, is fairly ordinary, albeit somewhat of a crazy drunk. As this unlikely couple discovers, love is much more than just a first kiss or a wedding; the years that come afterward in the journey of marriage brings with it many joys as well as challenges.

Pros:

• A strong cast of characters and a captivating lead couple.
• Tackling mature issues in a thought-provoking way without being too heavy or too light.
• Humor that doesn’t overly rely on anime references and actually uses the interesting couple dynamic and side characters to full effect.

Cons:

• The short runtime, not because it didn’t leave time for development (They developed the characters perfectly in the time allotted to them), I just wanted more of their antics.
• No Season 3 😦

The quality of this anime surprised me quite a bit considering how short the runtime (3 minutes) was for each episode. However, in that short time, they managed to tell a very fun and yet somehow real story about love, adulthood, and the differences between people who love each other and how they learn to accept them.

There’s honestly nothing bad I can say about it, as it exceeded my expectations going in. I expected the formula to be something like:

• Husband does a weeb thing
• Wife berates him for doing weeb thing
• Hilarity ensues

And while it does do this, it also does a lot more with the dynamic of a regular person who fell in love with a full-blown otaku.

The protagonist of the series is very much Kaoru, as we see her struggles as a wife and a working woman, while it is Hajime who usually progresses the plot with his antics. If you have been watching anime for a long time, you can understand a lot of the references and jokes directed to the anime fan.

However, the series’ humor doesn’t just rely on references. The cast of zany side-characters, Hajime’s anti-social but relatable tendencies, as well as Kaoru’s cluelessness of the medium of anime and internet culture, is a great source of gags.

However, I believe the series’ true strength lies in the mature themes and topics that it tackles.

Before reading the rest of the review, I highly suggest watching it here on Crunchyroll, or wherever else you can find it, if it isn’t available in your country or Crunchyroll just craps out on you (like it often does for me). It will take you less than an hour and thirty minutes to watch the whole thing in one sitting, so just go ahead and watch it first, as I do talk about some parts that I’d much rather you watch first instead of read about in a blog.

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These issues range from things such stressing about how important you are in your job position-

-the dangers of over-fantasizing about fictional characters-

– the prospects of marrying the right person-

– dealing with loneliness and stagnation-

-And of course, having children.

The way they tackle it is so nicely handled that it sort of shocked me. Lots of similar anime to this would have resorted to cheap gags, shallow feel-good moments, and dirty jokes, but this show is not afraid of letting you see the vulnerable sides of being an adult.

I love the relationship between Hajime and Kaoru. It’s a realistic relationship, in that not everything is peachy clean or melodramatic. You can see Kaoru genuinely trying to understand his husband’s hobbies, as well as Hajime struggling to adjust to being a normal person every once in a while for his wife’s sake.

Honestly, Kaoru is a real standout character. I love that she treats her husband’s weirdness with confusion mixed with understanding instead of just disdain. She also has her fair share of problems herself, being a heavy smoker and drinker early in life, as well being a bit of a workaholic. It’s a very different female character from the usual in a romcom, that’s for sure.

It leaves a good message about how important it is to have people in your life that you can depend on, no matter how different they may seem from you. Above all things, what’s important isn’t the differences or the similarities, but the ability to understand each other, and bettering each other for it.

After all-

Thanks for reading my review, and I’ll catch you guys next time!